The new rule seems to be that any woman who writes about online harassment will herself be harassed, and in this case it didn’t take long.

The gamebro army, completely ignorant about how journalism works, decided that she had a “conflict of interest” — because, and I’m totally serious here, she had previously exchanged some tweets with Quinn and donated some money to her on Patreon. One critic, who put together a much-passed-around graphic outlining the charges against her, angrily denounced Frank for “vigorously defending [Quinn] while pretending to be impartial.”

There are a couple of giant problems with these accusations. First off, Frank never pretended to be impartial. She was not reporting on anything for the Guardian. She was writing an OPINION PIECE about a topic that obviously affected her. Editors don’t assign OPINION PIECES to writers who are, or who pretend to be, impartial. They assign these pieces to people WITH OPINIONS. You’re not going to get much of an OPINION PIECE from someone with no opinions.

Second of all, according to Frank (and I believe her), she had asked The Guardian to attach a brief statement to the end of her piece noting her — admittedly tenuous — connections with Quinn and Sarkeesian. The Guardian editors chose not to run it because they thought these connections were too trivial to merit a mention. They forgot that she was a woman writing about gaming, and that misogynistic assholes will seize on anything, literally anything, as an excuse for harassment.

After she started getting harassed for her alleged “conflict of interest,” Frank wrote a blog post dealing with the issue clearly and straightforwardly, and convinced the Guardian editors to append a version of her original disclosure statement to the piece:

Update: Jenn Frank has purchased and is a supporter of Zoë Quinn’s work, although this is the first article she has written on the developer. Frank has also briefly met Anita Sarkeesian.

As absurd as it is for a woman writer to have to publicly confess that she “has also briefly met Anita Sarkeesian,” as if this is some sort of crime, Frank thus answered her critics directly. And that should have been it. But of course the harassment — sorry, the perfectly legitimate criticism — continued, and on Wednesday night Frank announced that she’d had enough:

https://twitter.com/jennatar/status/507338379474649088

https://twitter.com/jennatar/status/507411937383022592

The only “conflict of interest” here was the “conflict of interest” that Frank wrote about originally in her Guardian piece. After describing her horror on discovering that someone had been trying to hack her email, she wrote:

My unabashed love for video games, my colleagues and my work have a conflict of interest with my own terror.

And, at least for now, the terror has won.

Meanwhile, game designer and media critic Mattie Brice was also extracting herself from an industry and a culture that has been grinding her down. I’ll let her tweets tell the story. (See her timeline for more.)

real talk is that people like me have been getting harassed and disregarded for a long time and patience's gone for things not being better

Here’s the screenshot; click for a larger and more readable version — if you’re not triggered by violent threats, that is.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Seriously, if you know, tell me, because I am fresh out of explanations for this level of blind hatred.

NOTE: This thread is a NO SHITHEAD thread. If you say anything that in any way even slightly excuses or justifies the harassment of these women, you can fuck right off to any of the eight zillion places on the internet where you can badmouth these women to your heart’s content. I and the other mods will be banning and deleting as necessary.

Comments

All those people who claim that it’s about integrity have still failed to explain why Zoe Quinn got the bulk of the harassment and not the writers who were supposedly biased in her favor because she allegedly slept with them. Even if there are people supportive of gamergate who aren’t doing any harassing they are sure complicit in it.

It’s about as bad, if not worse then you’d think on the gaming forum I frequented. Virtually everyone (myself included) in the topic about this was a guy, and most were far more concerned about how it effected their games and their (already nonexistent) trust in the gaming industry. Constant yelling about how “discriminated against” gamers are is common, with one poster even comparing #Gamergate to Ferguson, of all things. Even the more “rational” people are infected by this bizarre case of David Broder-esque “both sides do it” thinking that makes them side with the gamerbros anyway (Actual line of thought from one poster: Yes, there have been death threats and rape threats towards Sarkeesian, but she used a snarky Willy Wonka image to respond to people on twitter about #Gamegate, therefor both sides are to blame, continue circling the wagons.)

They really are convinced that the game industry and gaming journalists are out to get them and make them look bad. The reality? The worse you can accuse the journalists of here is giving gamerbros enough rope to hang themselves on. These people are circling the wagons around their community, fearful of any change and hyped up on a victim complex worthy of a Republican campaign speech, thinking that all the “end of gamer” writing is a personal attack on them. And many of them have used “Not All Gamers” without a hint of irony or knowledge of what the term has been used for in the past.

Oh yes, it is a toxic culture of people who want to build an exclusive little clubhouse for themselves. And it needs to change whether they want it to or not. Hell, especially because they don’t want it to.

“Pumpkin-Online is a farming/dating sim MMORPG, wildly different than any other out there. Instead of level grinding with battle and combat, Pumpkin-Online is a relaxed game. You can role-play a profession, craft items, customize your own private farm, go on quests, have fun with NPCs, and more, all with friends!

You can form relationships with nearly every NPC, regardless of gender. Form lasting friendships, or pursue a relationship with any single NPC of your choice through interactive and rewarding questlines! “

This is all very upsetting. I’ve been thinking for a long time that I’d like to write a blog, as opposed to commenting on other people’s blogs, but seeing all this abuse towards women who dare to have even a neutral opinion–never mind a contrary one–is making me think twice, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one. So what’s the answer? It seems that taking steps to address the “doxxing” would be a good first thing to do. Maybe make it illegal and put liability for any harm suffered by someone who’s been “doxxed” on the person doing the “doxxing.”

Of course these snotballs feel like they “won”. They get pleasure from making women suffer and putting them “in their place”. This thread of glee at women’s suffering runs all through the manosphere and the guys in the gaming and tech communities sympathetic to it.

It’s there in Paul Elam’s “activist” advice to men that they should beat the shit out of any woman who puts a hand on them and make the woman clean up the blood. It’s there in Elam’s claim that the thought of “fucking feminists’ shit up” gives him an erection. It’s there in Reddit’s Red Pillers consoling each other that all those mean nasty women who didn’t give them the sex they feel they’re entitled to will face their comeuppance when the woman “hits the wall”, turns 30, and no guy will ever want them again and the women will die all alone in a house full of 500 cats. It’s there in the endless MGTOW posts about how by choosing not to date/get married, MGTOWs will cause society to collapse (MGTOWs being integral to the proper functioning of society, apparently, because reasons), and women will be forced to become MGTOW sex slaves just in order to survive. And of course, in it’s more extreme form, the “I want women to suffer” thread is there in the words of men like Elliot Rodgers and George Sodini, who thought that women not having sex with them was a crime punishable by death.

These guys could care less about what they’re actually accomplishing. As long as some woman somewhere gets hurt, it’s a “win” for them.

Yes. I think there’s a not insignificant portion of the harassers that aren’t even interested in games at all. Some of them are just misogynists who see an opportunity to stick it to some uppity women.

Wonderful. Not that I’m surprised but these guys responsible for the harassment of female game devs are actually the ones destroying the games industry. I’ve always hated these gamebros, they’re also the ones usually responsible for harassing female gamers when they play online. You’ll never believe the kind of misogyny they spew even during online online game playing. Thankfully, game companies are starting to put measures in place to control harassment during online gaming.

You know. Out of all the consoles Nintendo is considered to be the most “family friendly” and doesn’t often produce a fps in the style of cod or battlefield (correct me if I’m wrong), which is where the misogynists usually congregate. If the gamebros do successfully alienate women from platforms like X box and playstation, wouldn’t it be in Nintendo’s interest to pick up the wayward female gamers? We’re talking about fucking half the gaming demographic here. They could take on the female designers, programmers, audience and hold most of the gaming market, since there are many guys with no objection to women in gaming. They could make a killing!

Well, games.on.net is going to have interesting forum topics for a while, isn’t it

No doubt this thread will be made to disappear like all the others regarding this topic but here goes anyway. The idea that if you disagree with Tim on a topic you should be excluded from viewing this site is absolutely appalling, I literally can not believe that a group that is fighting to be included would exclude people for thinking differently from them.

Anyway, if you are concerned about what has happened and feel as thought you are being discriminated against due to your beliefs I suggest you email iinet and ask them if they approve of Tim’s behavior, If you are not happy with their response then I can only recommend changing ISP.

Translation: It’s morally wrong to silence people for their beliefs, even if it’s your own platform. Therefore, it’s morally right for us to silence you for your beliefs, especially on your own platform.

@slivarth, No I disagree. There’s virtually no evidence that violence in video games causes violence in real life. There are some studies that find a correlation and some that don’t. Overall though, correlation does not equal causation. Yes, I agree that there are some assholes in gaming but the majority of gamers are not assholes nor are they violent, myself included.

Sorry, I’m not buying that a large portion of the harassers are just trolls who aren’t even into games. There are too many reports of women being harassed while gaming and sexual harassment within the industry. There’s probably a few joining in for the good old fashioned misogyny alone but let’s not pretend it’s the source of the problem.

It’s the accepted normal that is lazy misogyny in gaming I have a problem with. I don’t think gamers are likely to physically assault me. I do think shite attitudes towards women are likely to be displayed in passing by many of them though.

I expect a disproportionate degree of abuse from gamers due to being female and the fact I say things they find disagreeable like “Primarily portraying women as in distress and helpless or the victims of violent crime is gross”. I don’t think ALL GAMERS ARE LIKE THAT though or most gamers are violent (I’d guess gamers are less violent due to the extent they socialise from behind computer screens) or I should really take their rape and death threats seriously.

It’s still super duper fucked up the degree to which that behaviour appears to be prevalent and acceptable amongst gamers and it’s never something I’m going to tell people to grow a thicker skin about because the people who do it are responsible for it and they shouldn’t be behaving the way they do. This is on them, not anyone who’s is freaked the fuck out by angry gamers constantly calling them a cunt and waxing lyrical about them being assaulted or murdered.

None of this would happen if it weren’t acceptable amongst gamers to a significant extent and the attitudes and behaviours of the perfectly decent gamers were reflective of gaming culture. They aren’t though and the policing going on within gaming communities is not discouraging sexism and/or threats of violence to a large enough extent.

There I go being disagreeable again. Looking forward to today’s assortment of “I hope you get raped and die of AIDS”.

I’m amazed at the level of doublethink required to book any woman quitting the industry over harassment a victory and at the same time maintaining that they are lying about being under attack.

This is a sectarian movement that is planning to bring about a rapture of their own making by turning women into scapegoats and not a group that is representing concerns about any actual issue in the gaming industry.

@weirwoodtreehugger, If you’re replying to my comment, I never said that the harassers were just trolls. They are a subset of male gamers who are also misogynists. All I said was that in reply to a previous comment, that they are not the majority of even male gamers. What I was disputing was that violent video games cause people to become violent.

My first comment to this article even acknowledges that the harassers spoken about in the article are often the same people who harass female gamers who play online games and I find it despicable.

Being “into games” is not a very high bar to clear. I’m sure most humans in the U.S. that are of a certain age has played a video game at some point in their lives. There are apparently over 40 million people who actively play just one shooter franchise, Call of Duty (source). I’m pretty confident in saying that anyone who regularly plays shooters can consider themselves a “gamer” or “into games”.

Even if just a small fraction of those gamers are into harassing people online, then that is more than enough.

I wonder if their mommies know what they are doing? Sounds silly, I know, but I would wager that a goodly number of these brave and honorable souls still live at home or, at least, have their moms do their laundry for them. Can you imagine what these women might say if, by some magical miracle, the actions and words of their precious boys got back to them?

Most men who behave in hateful ways go to great lengths to keep their mothers from noticing. For the first time in my life I wish I was a hacker and could get the info from their accounts and send it on to their moms. If I found out, positively, that one of my sons was behaving in this manner, I would tear the hide right off of him…and my sons range from 30 to 40 years of age. Shame on these “men.”

I’m inclined to think the subset you speak of makes up a HUGE minority or possibly majority of male gamers. The attitude certainly seems prevalent and one doesn’t hear it shot down in gaming circles.

So why doesn’t this majority of male gamers who aren’t misogynists discourage the misogyny of the ones who are? Because that gives the impression the “I wanna rape you and watch you suffer and die delivering a stillborn fetus” crowd IS the majority or that at least the majority doesn’t have a problem with that behaviour.

If you’re the majority you have the power to shut the vocal minority down via simple policing.

You gotta admit that the last years have produced a lot of actual tangible proof that video games do produce violence in real life and against real people. Sure, it wasn’t robbing stores or shooting up families like the pundits feared, but what is happening here and to these women does constitute a violent crime. You – and we, the rest of us who play video games – can’t nay this shit away.

@Jono There was a different comment up-thread that WWTH was clearly replying to.

@marinerachel

It’s still super duper fucked up the degree to which that behaviour appears to be prevalent and acceptable amongst gamers

I’m not disagreeing about how fucked up some of these people are, but I would just like to say that one of the things I find so encouraging about the games.on.net article is that when people like that who rely on “gamers” for their income and continued existence think the fucked up gamebros are an insignificant portion of their real audience (so much so that they feel like they can tell them to just go away), it kind of helps to remind me that the gamebros really are a fairly small percentage of the overall population—the gaming population and, even more so, of the world. It makes me feel better about humanity.

One of the other really gross things the slimebags have been doing is acting offended when someone calls them out for their shit (example: “gamers are acting like entitled babies”) and claiming THAT is the real harassment while all the shit directed at women is excused by claims of it being fake or the harassed woman only bringing attention to it for publicity.

I hate people like this – take your toddler tantrums elsewhere, like to your room where no one can witness it. They absolutely have no excuse for acting like this and it’s really sad that many other people just say “ignore them”. I’m sorry, that doesn’t work for real-life bullies, and it won’t work for online bullies, because they are still the same bullies, IRL or online.

I dream of the day where, in response to the gamerbros virulent misogyny, a popular and beloved (to them) game franchise makes yet another installment of the same game, but without ANY white guys. Even better, there’s secrecy around the game, and no one’s mentioned that there aren’t any white guys in the game. Imagine that, a whole game that does not include one white guy. Instead, all of the characters and NPCs and customization choices are based around everybody else and there’s plenty of women characters that aren’t abused and/or dead and/or whores. And if this day should happen, I will gladly open my windows to hear the sounds of gamebro heads exploding in rage at such abominable changes. And maybe, just maybe, I will even record that sound on my phone to save it for posterity.

I know at least one of your sons has written here before, and from what I can know froma forum like this, my guess is that you have raised sons who would never behave like this in a trillion years. A good thing, too – they probably are pretty attached to their hides.

@sunnycombrera
That is one of the more creative ways I have seen someone deal with a dick pic.

This goes back to an earlier point in this comment thread about why guys send these pictures. What on Earth makes them think that a stranger wants to see that?!? He actually said that he “thought you would like it.” Why?!? I am so confused.

Also, boasting about how big your penis is after you tried to shame a woman for saying she didn’t want to see it, is not the way to get her to change her mind.

Not All Gamers are violent. I would bet the huge majority of gamers are not violent.

But you know, it only takes one with the desire and the opportunity to break Zoe Quinn’s kneecaps. And it only takes the non-violent majority of gamers sitting back quietly to make that one violent gamer think that breaking Zoe Quinn’s kneecaps is an OK thing to do All it takes is for the non-violent gamers to not object, or even worse, argue that we should all ignore this kind of violent threat, that it’s NBD, because: Not All Gamers.

sunnycombrera: I can only assume that his reasoning for sending dick picks “I thought you would like it” is bc he’s very much in love with his own dick and thinks all women would love it too. After all women don’t have minds, tastes or wants or desires of their own to men like him.

Why do you think they act so shocked when women disagree with them? It never occurs to them that women would NOT want a picture of something he considers to be the most important thing in his entire universe.

Some men send pictures of their car or kids or their house. For some men, it’s their dicks.

So… they claim it as a victory, and I can’t see how they’re wrong. They’re quite successfully undoing years of hard-fought social progress, by running out people who stand up against their bigotry.

It’s like the KKK in the south attacking and sometimes killing people(of all races) who stood up for equal rights. That was only ended with a long-term anti-KKK campaign by the FBI.

I mean, obviously, the severity here is lower, with so far just the threats, and I don’t want to do that awful thing people do where they raise a current issue to the importance of past ones. I just want to compare the fact that they’re apparently succeeding at their awful goals by criminal means.

I think that perhaps a majority (though certainly not all) male gamers are at the very least complicit in the misogyny against female gamers, critics and developers. When you choose to either be silent, or get defensive or claim both sides are to blame, you’re part of the problem. If comment sections and twitter are any indication, the majority of male gamers are part of the problem.

So… they claim it as a victory, and I can’t see how they’re wrong. They’re quite successfully undoing years of hard-fought social progress, by running out people who stand up against their bigotry.

It may be a victory, but they’ve already lost the war. We (as a group) aren’t going anywhere, and this conversation isn’t going away. They are trying like hell to reframe it as “journalistic integrity”, but people aren’t buying it as must as they’d like. For every woman they loudly push away, we gain more allies that are disgusted by their behavior.

A majority of self-described “gamers” may be complicit in misogyny, homophobia, and racism, but growing numbers of them are becoming uncomfortable with their complicity. Complicity is the default position. Being loudly complicit and complicit because it’s just “how things are” are really the same position. When we have this discussion, some people become loudly complicit, but that doesn’t mean their position is growing in support. Their loudness is alienating more and more of their more ambivalent comrades, and is encouraging more and more people to reject a culture of hatred and anger.

I haven’t heard of anyone who was legitimately like “I was super concerned about representation and misogyny in video games, but then I learned about how Zoe Quinn was so unethical and now I think the most pressing topic in pop culture is the integrity of game ‘journalism’.” No, what we hear is people who were already on the side of misogyny becoming more loudly invested in misogyny journalistic integrity, or people who were formerly on the side of misogyny realizing how awful and hurtful misogyny is and joining the side of social progress.

@lkeke35
I get what you are saying about his motivation, but I guess I’m just amazed that this continues to happen. I do get the impression that the guys who send dick pics do so repeatedly and to many women. How many women have to say no or just stop messaging the guy before he figures out that it doesn’t work?

Do you have any studies showing that the majority of male gamers even read comments sections or have Twitter accounts? I think there may be a pretty large percentage of the world’s population who actually never bother to read comment threads on the Internet, at all, ever. (Although I also have no supporting data.)

I do get the whole argument that silence is sometimes complicity, but I just find it a little bit ironic to see this in the same thread where people were defending the rights of women to leave the industry because they need to preserve their own emotional and psychological wellbeings.

Personally, I wouldn’t read the types of comment threads David posts here outside this forum, where he and all of you make it safe for me. I certainly wouldn’t go over there and comment. That kind of confrontation makes me physically ill. I think maybe some male gamers who vehemently disagree with the behavior and speech of gamebros may also not feel up to that kind of confrontation. Some male gamers may disagree but simply lack the time or interest or inclination to read or comment in threads. Some male gamers may just want to focus on more positive aspects of their own lives than listening to whiny gamebros rant and be ugly. In WoW, I think a whole lot of male gamers are a lot more interested in going out and playing the game that they are paying to play than they are in typing and arguing in trade chat. That doesn’t mean they aren’t supportive of women in much quieter ways.

If I were going to guess anything about the majority of gamers, male and female alike, it would be that they probably just haven’t bothered to inform themselves about the issue. Ignorance is its own kind of complicity, but I don’t think it’s inherently evil.

The sad thing is that they aren’t undoing any process, they’re simply re-enforcing existing structures. Remember that even while the creators of these games weren’t any more or less sexist than the culture they’re from, it still took about a decade and a half until we went from: “Roberta Williams is in charge of most of the interesting titles coming out this year” to: “Is the Anna Kurnikova effect making us report on these conventionally attractive female developers as if they were wierd (the answer is yes, but we do not talk about the Fight Club)” in gaming journalism itself.

They’re conservative revolutionaries, which is pretty much exactly the same shit as GirlWritesWhat, if memory serves me right.

Can anyone explain to this poor, confused soul, why it seems to be that the topic of video games arouses such…. umm.. lets just say, strong feelings? amongst the dudebro misogynist set?

I mean, I’m not the world’s biggest gamer or anything, but I play video games. I like video games. Video games can be fun! But why is the very though of a woman (or… shudder… women) designing or critiscising video games considered the worst thing in the history of the world? Why are video games the line in the sand?

Imagine a world in which Anita Sarkeesian got everything she wanted. A world where she was grand dictator of the video game, and all bent to her will. What would change? There would still BE video games, as it’s clear that Sarkeesian likes them. There would still probably be violent FSP, Doom clones (kids these days don’t know what they’re missing) and Grand Theft Auto, Macon, Georgia. Those games might not be so freakin’ sexist to be sure, but in the Sarkeesian dictatorship, they’d probably still exist.

Is this terrifying view of things to come so awful that it inspires the 12th keyboard commando regiment to engage the enemy, not with reasonable criticism of her ideas, but hideous threats and other stupidity? Seriously, why is “you can take our lives! But you’ll never take our… right to be sexist pigs in virtual reality!” the rallying cry?

Can anyone explain to this poor, confused soul, why it seems to be that the topic of video games arouses such…. umm.. lets just say, strong feelings? amongst the dudebro misogynist set?

I mean, I’m not the world’s biggest gamer or anything, but I play video games. I like video games. Video games can be fun! But why is the very though of a woman (or… shudder… women) designing or critiscising video games considered the worst thing in the history of the world? Why are video games the line in the sand?

Imagine a world in which Anita Sarkeesian got everything she wanted. A world where she was grand dictator of the video game, and all bent to her will. What would change? There would still BE video games, as it’s clear that Sarkeesian likes them. There would still probably be violent FSP, Doom clones (kids these days don’t know what they’re missing) and Grand Theft Auto, Macon, Georgia. Those games might not be so freakin’ sexist to be sure, but in the Sarkeesian dictatorship, they’d probably still exist.

Is this terrifying view of things to come so awful that it inspires the 12th keyboard commando regiment to engage the enemy, not with reasonable criticism of her ideas, but hideous threats and other stupidity? Seriously, why is “you can take our lives! But you’ll never take our… right to be sexist pigs in virtual reality!” the rallying cry?

But remember, GamerGate isn’t about misogyny, at all! Just about journalistic integrity! They’re not sexists, it’s just the corrupt gaming journalists using women as a shield from criticism!

Also, everyone’s favorite libelous PR expert has gotten into the debate. And an acquaintance actually thought about emailing her because she seemed more reasonable! Maybe Janet has learned from being banned by Twitter… to hide her unprofessionalism and general nastiness better.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.